Bylaw to ban spiked fences and save Kelowna deer on city backburner

KELOWNA – A call to ban spiked fences in Kelowna is in bureaucratic limbo.

Conservation Officer Ken Owens called for a bylaw when interviewed by iNFOnews.ca earlier this year.  He said from January until March, 10 deer had already been impaled while trying to leap over fences and had to be euthanized, but Owens said conservation officers have been responding to these “horrific” calls for years.

“It’s gone on far too long,” Owens said.

While city staff has not been idle on the file, nothing is likely to go to city council for some months to come.

Initially, the city was waiting for feedback from the provincial Ministry of Environment but have since been told the ministry had no interest in commenting on the proposal, Corey Davis, the city’s environmental co-ordinator, told iNFOnews.ca

Currently, he’s bogged down with the annual flood of spring development applications and a shortage of staff to draft new bylaws.

That doesn’t mean his department has ignored the issue.

“There are hundreds of these fences all over the place,” Davis said. “We do discourage them on new developments.”

He expects to have time to work on a bylaw over the next few months, saying it’s definitely on his list of things to do.

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